Google thought we’d all forget about the headphone jack. It was wrong.
October 6, 2017 by admin
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Unlike Apple, which dedicated plenty of time to its “courageous” move to kill the 3.5mm headphone jack last year, Google never really addressed the matter on stage, preferring to quietly hint at it. It talked about better front-facing speakers, and it introduced Pixel-branded smart wireless earphones without explaining why they’re really needed.
Everyone in the audience who followed the Pixel 2 rumors already knew that Google was about to become “courageous,” just like Apple. But Google didn’t quite copy Apple here. Instead, Google killed the headphone jack quietly, with no witnesses.
The worst part of all? One of Google’s “fixes” is even more expensive than Apple’s.
Apple last year explained on stage why it killed the headphone jack. Google didn’t.
Then it provided several fixes for the newly created problem. Google did that too, but worse.
Apple said the iPhone 7 will deliver stereo sound, a first for the iPhone. Google did the same with the Pixel 2 phones.
Apple announced smart wireless headphones priced at $159, the AirPods. Google matched the AirPods with its Pixel Buds earphones that also cost $159.
Apple said that there’s going to be a dongle in the iPhone 7 box in addition to the Lightning EarPods so that old 3.5mm headphones can be used with the new iPhone. Google never said that. And by the way, the Pixel 2 does not ship with any kind of headphones in the box.
Then Apple addressed the matter on the iPhone 7 product pages. To realize there’s no headphone jack on the Pixel 2, you have to go the specs page and notice the port’s absence.
I get it, Google has its own way of murdering the headphone jack, and it doesn’t seem to proud to do it. Which brings me to the worst possible thing about Google’s way: the price of the dongle. The 3.5mm-to-USB-C dongle is just as unsightly as Apple’s 3.5mm-to-Lightning connector. And you can lose Google’s just as easily. But Google charges $20 for the dongle, while Apple wants only $9 for the accessory. That’s really a surprising move. Is this Google’s equivalent of “Apple tax”?
The worst thing you can do if you lose your iPhone dongle is to use the brand-new Lightning EarPods that come with the phone. It’s likely they’re hidden somewhere in a drawer if you rely on a dongle to deliver sound to your ears. On the Pixel 2 however, that option isn’t available. Google did not create wired USB-C headphones of its own.
If you want to listen to music and recharge your iPhone, it costs $35 or $40, depending on what kind of wired headphones you plan to use. Google’s dongle that offers both a USB-C and a 3.5mm port costs $45.
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Young Worker Clocked 159 Hours of Overtime in a Month. Then She Died.
October 6, 2017 by admin
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In a 2016 government report on karoshi, nearly a quarter of companies surveyed said that some employees were working more than 80 hours of overtime a month. Months later, the president of the advertising agency Dentsu resigned after an outcry over the 2015 death of an employee, Matsuri Takahashi, 24, who jumped from the roof of an employee dormitory.
Like Ms. Takahashi, Ms. Sado was a young woman making her way in a blue-chip organization. Her employer is considered one of the most prestigious companies in Japan, a country where exhaustion is often seen as a sign of diligence.
A 2014 government investigation found that Ms. Sado’s death was a direct result of her work life.
“She was under circumstances that she could not secure enough days off due to responsibilities that required her to stay up very late,” the labor office in the Shibuya section of Tokyo said in a statement to the Asahi Shimbun newspaper. The office described her as being “in a state of accumulated fatigue and chronic sleep deprivation” at the time her death.
The broadcaster said it had delayed revealing details about Ms. Sado’s death out of respect for her family and timed the release to coincide with planned workplace changes.
“We decided to disclose her death to all of our employees and to the public to share the company’s resolve to prevent a recurrence and follow through with reforms,” NHK said.
Ryoichi Ueda, the president of NHK, said that Ms. Sado’s parents “hoped we would take utmost efforts so that another such case won’t happen again.”
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But Ms. Sado’s parents criticized NHK’s response as inadequate. In a statement published by the Asahi Shimbun on Thursday, they said they feared that her death would be forgotten and “wondered if the company would keep hiding it, or why the union kept silent.”
Her parents also asked why the company had not limited their daughter’s working hours.
“It is an abnormal work situation to work almost every day on Saturday and Sunday, working until late at night every day, so we cannot understand why such a situation was overlooked,” their statement said.
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Although they did not immediately publicize their daughter’s death, they said that Ms. Takahashi’s case had spurred them to publicly discuss it.
They also criticized NHK for not disseminating news of their daughter’s death throughout the company. They said that other employees — even journalists who had reported on other cases of karoshi — did not know that one of their colleagues had died from the condition.
Karoshi, which has included the burden of entertaining clients or bosses in some industries, has long prompted calls for legislation.
The Japan Institute for Labor Policy and Training, in a white paper released last year on the prevention of karoshi, noted that the “undeniable problems in Japan’s work environment” were especially detrimental to regular employees under age 35.
National guidelines use a threshold of 100 hours of overtime in a month — or an average of 80 hours of monthly overtime in a six-month period — to determine whether a worker is at risk of physical or mental harm. Those guidelines were put forward by a government panel in April, but critics say that more is needed.
In February, the Japanese government and the Keidanren, Japan’s largest business group, introduced an effort dubbed “Premium Friday” that encouraged companies to allow workers to leave the office at 3 p.m. on the last Friday of the month.
Only a fraction of companies are participating.
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